


How the God of Births was Born

by Crane_Among_Celandines



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 01:01:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17909039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crane_Among_Celandines/pseuds/Crane_Among_Celandines
Summary: Tourists to the Republic often ask about the statue in the Temple of Amaat...





	How the God of Births was Born

**Author's Note:**

> For the Raven Tower release event, day two, "Gods".

“What gods do you worship on Valskaay, Captain Queter?” Head of Security Lusulun asked, one evening.

My Captain made an equivocal gesture. “I never knew Valskaay,” she said. “I was born on Athoek.” I could feel in her a faint spark of anger at that. Some of her friends, I knew, had a powerful yearning for the heritage denied them by the abduction of their grandparents. Pragmatic Queter had once said to one, “On Valskaay we would have been natives, not transportees. But anyone who thinks that guarantees them a better life never saw a Ychana turned away from a Xhai shop.” That person had not spoken to her for a full month following.

Nonetheless, Lusulun’s comment annoyed her. The thoughtlessness of it. Had she only stopped to think, she would certainly have been aware that my Captain was too young to have been born on Valskaay. That she did not suggested that, in some part, she saw Queter as “Valskaayan” before all else.

“But,” my Captain continued, “we fieldworkers carry on some of the traditions our grandparents brought with them.” I felt a prickle of wicked mischief from her. “For example, we have the Toad God for births. Yahiik, he’s called,” she said, dropping in the exotic Valskaayan pronoun like spice on a pastry.

“A toad, for births?” Lusulun asked, with apparently genuine fascination. “How is s- that is, _he_ , connected?” She made an admirably credible attempt at the long vowel, uncommon in modern Radchaai.

My Captain took a sip of her arrack. “Well,” she began, “you must surely have noticed that babies look… well, rather like toads? Especially when they cry.”

“Sort of squashed,” said Lusulun, nodding. “And with their eyes all wrinkled up.”

“So,” continued my Captain, “there had, as I understand it, always been an idiom in Valskaayan, ‘shrieking toad’ for a person’s baby. And one day – the mythological ‘one day’, mind you – something happened. A mother lost her baby. How exactly varies depending on which version of the story you hear; sometimes she put her down by the river and she crawled in and was washed away. Sometimes the baby sneaks into a wagon and then falls out of it.” She took another drink, hiding her smile. “My favourite,” she said, “has the baby being stolen by foolish Radchaai soldiers who intend to make her an ancillary, then abandoned her upon realising how long they would have to wait for her to grow large enough. But I suspect that’s a recent addition. Anyway, the baby is lost, in the wilderness. The mother is distraught. She searches for hours. She hears, _errrt-rrp, errrt-rrp,_ the sound of toads. Louder and more vigorous than she’s ever heard before. She follows the sound, and finds – what else – her baby. Covered in a blanket of toads keeping her warm, and with one enormous, brilliantly red one sat upon her head like a nightcap, croaking loudest of all. And that was Yahiik.”

Lusulun, who had looked quite charmed through all of this, gave a slightly tipsy giggle. “How excellent!” she said. “What a magnificent image.”

My Captain raised one finger. “And!” she said, keeping her expression neutral only by dint of prodigious self-control, “that is the source of one of our birth traditions today. If a Valskaayan has a child, it’s traditional to give the parents a red hat for the child, and a letter with the message, ‘Felicitous wishes, upon the spawning of your shrieking toad.’”

Luslun nodded enthusiastically. “What a fine idea,” she said. “So nice to have a proper way to show one’s hopes for the happy family.”

The conversation turned to other things after that. For all her blunders, Lusulun was not a bad person, and I knew my Captain found her company convivial. But I noted that there was a young person of Queter’s acquaintance about to have her first child, and marked the date.

 

Two months later, the birth arrived. All was well. The young person had elected to have the child grown in a tank, rather than undergo the surgery she would have needed to carry a pregnancy – there was a time when this would have been entirely impossible for a Valskaayan fieldworker, but _Justice of Toren_ was very passionate indeed about bodily autonomy, and ensured such things were available to those in need. Queter and I were there when the infant was decanted, and watched the mother’s awe. “I never thought I could have a child,” she said softly to Queter. “If you’re _atseeq_ , you just get used to it. Focus on being a parent to your siblings’ children.” She used a Valskaayan word for males who are attracted exclusively to other males.

My Captain nodded. “Thank the Fleet Captain,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe how she had to fight to get free access to Medical for childbirth services.

She and I had been at some of those meetings. I remembered Ifian Wos – a distant descendant of Minask’s murderer, I had always despised her – saying, “Why would we _want_ more Valskaayans around here? If they can’t afford to have children, how can they afford to raise them?”

My Captain went pale with rage, and I felt a fierce and breathtaking desire to beat the High Priest senseless.

 _Justice of Toren_ looked at Ifian then, and said to her: “If they can’t afford to raise children, despite working in their properly assigned place then, surely, the assignments are unjust. Surely,” she said, “you would not say it is _proper_ that people who labour for all our benefit cannot afford even to have a child of their own blood.” She leant closer to Ifian, and said more quietly, “ _Surely_ , you would not talk of ‘foreign perversions’, in people who were brought here against their will?” It was, I sensed, the sequel to a conversation I had not been privy to. “Who was it that appointed you, Eminence?” _Justice of Toren_ asked.

“The Lord of the Radch,” said Ifian Wos. The tone of her answer gave no hint that she understood the trap.

“This,” I said, taking up my cousin’s cue, “is not the Radch.”

“Amaat’s will-”

“I remember the days before the Usurper,” I continued, speaking over her. “When Amaat’s will was not so conveniently expressed through one solitary individual. We chose our priests by conclave, and if they accepted the duty they took vows of poverty, and forwent their houses in service to the gods.”

“A fine tradition,” said _Justice of Toren_. “Perhaps we should put it to a vote before the System Council?”

Station Administrator Celar – who had been silent until then – spoke: “Indeed, Fleet Captain.” She laced her long, thick fingers together over her stomach and sat back in her chair, a picture of gravitas. “It seems to me that we can hardly rely on Anaander Mianaai as a source of proper authority in so important a matter.” She had borne a quiet, implacable grudge against Ifian ever since the High Priest organised the temple strike.

“But of course,” I said, “even if we make such a change, it might perhaps apply only to the selection of the _next_ High Priest…”

We had no more obstructionism from Ifian Wos.

 

Queter and I left the young mother to her child, and made our way back towards our quarters on the station. We were due to interview candidates for crew tomorrow, and her mind was full of hopes and fears, vaguely formed and irremediable. As we entered the main concourse, I spotted Head of Security Lusulun, striding vigorously in our direction. In one hand, she carried a small knitted cap of bright red wool and in the other, a tube such as might hold a rolled wall-scroll. _Captain,_ I sent.

Seeing Lusulun, my Captain seized me by the arm and drew me swiftly into the recess beside a tea shop, putting her back to the wall and pulling me into a close embrace so we might be overlooked as another pair of besotted lovers. _I can’t believe she’s going to do it!_ she sent, all worries swamped beneath a giddy, horrified amusement.

_Should we stop her?_

_Gods no,_ she replied, her eyes glittering with silent laughter. _But let’s get out of here before she delivers the gifts_.

We heard nothing of the consequences that day, nor the next, and our time was consumed by selecting and training my new crew. It wasn’t until a full month later that we saw the young mother again, and her daughter with the scarlet hat pulled snugly over her soft dark hair. “What a lovely hat,” my Captain said. “It looks so warm.”

“Yes,” said the mother, “It was a gift from Head of Security Lusulun. Along with a beautiful piece of calligraphy congratulating me on my ‘shrieking toad.’” She shrugged. “I think it’s some Sahut tradition or something – I assume the reference to a toad is lost in the translation. Still, it was awfully kind of her to think of me.”

My Captain and I exchanged glances. _I didn’t know you were a source of Sahut traditions,_ I sent.

 _I suppose Lusulun assumed she would know it was a Valskaayan tradition, and_ she _assumed it was Sahut… Praise Amaat Lusulun didn’t tell her how she learned of it._

 

And the young mother told her friends, and they celebrated the children of _their_ friends thusly, and _that_ is why there is now an enormous cinnabar sculpture of a toad in the Temple of Amaat.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, it's another in my loosely connected Sphene series, though really it's mostly just the viewpoint.  
> I'm not certain if we ever really get a timescale for the arrival of the Valskaayan transportees at Athoek, but we know that Queter has grandparents who were there, and I think it was implied that many of the fieldworkers were born on Athoek. Either way, I've always imagined them as a gradually more distinct cultural group, as more and more of them are Athoek-born.  
> We know from a remark made by Breq in Ancillary Justice that Radchaai beget children in a variety of ways, whether from their own body (with or without surgery to make that possible), via surrogacy, or grown in tanks. I'm assuming that the medical assistance for anything other than old-fashioned female body-births wasn't available to the fieldworkers under the Radch, given the general awfulness of their doctor.  
> The possibility of gay Valskaayans (and the term for them) are entirely my own flight of fancy. We know they acknowledge at least two genders, and absent any canon  
> to the contrary I have assumed they're associated with the two common sexes.  
> My remark about Ifian Wos as a descendant of Captain Minask's murderer is a callback to my other piece "The Fall of Nenkur", in which the killer was Lieutenant Seliet Wos.  
> Head of Security Lusulun is identified by Station as being half Sahut in Ancillary Mercy. This is the only time that ethnic group is ever mentioned, and we know nothing about them. I presume from this dearth of appearances they are a small group, and thus it's quite possible any odd traditions that Lusulun put forward would be presumed to be Sahut traditions.


End file.
